Not really. Even back in Mark Twain and Thomas Jefferson's days, the "news" media were entirely uncredible, viz:
"Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoe making and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poor house."
- Mark Twain
"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."
--Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1819
"If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."
--Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle... Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter would be very short."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1807
"I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast."
- Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman
The only people who think any of this has changed are in the "news" media. And obviously nothing they say or think can be taken as the truth.
- Mark Twain
I don't think the media term had been coined in Twain's day. He would have referred to The Press, or newspapers, because there was no other media. A Google search of that quote comes up with non-Twain sources.
(Since we are harping on The MSM for inaccuracy, we shouldn't be posting inaccurate quotes on this thread in particular).
LOVE that quote from Sherman. One of my all time favorites. He DID hate the Press.